


Scars

by PragmaticHominid, Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)



Series: Falling Further [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 19:54:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20711624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/PragmaticHominid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent
Summary: On the eve of their first kill since they arrived at the quiet beach house, Will contemplates how he and Hannibal came to be here together and the scars they earned along the way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, quick explanation!
> 
> The fantastic Bluebird_Rose has created a podfic for the third and forth fics in this series, "Bleeding Out" and "The Place That Made Him." The first of these podfics will be available quite soon, maybe later today. 
> 
> In anticipation, I've made the revisions to this series that I've been planning to do for a long time now. This fic and "Denial" were the first major contributions I made to this fandom, and while the other three parts of this series still stand up, "Scars" was begging for a total rewrite. 
> 
> This then, is a radically different version of the original story, one which (I think) flows much better, offers better characterization, and more firmly bridges the gap between "Denial" and "Bleeding Out."
> 
> You don't necessarily have to read the story that came before to read this one, though it does work better as a series.

Will bent to lash the boat to the dock, and felt the scar across his belly twinge with the shifting of his muscles, a dull fishhook tugging at him from the inside. 

It didn’t hurt exactly, though for a long time it had, the white-hot dizzying pain of the knife’s intrusion fading to an ever present dull ache and eventually to nothing more that tugging sensation, like his skin wasn’t quite big enough to hold him inside it. 

These days that particular scar felt as though it’s always been a part of him. There’s a familiarity to that scar - a kind of comfort. 

The right side of his mouth pulled up in an uneasy grimace at that thought, nearly mirroring the left side of his face, where the newer scar Dolarhyde carved into his cheek pulled his upper lip back, drawing that side of his mouth into a forever-snarl that bared his teeth. 

That scar was no comfort. It distorted his expressions. Vague frowns became threatening. When he attempted to smile, his face took the shape of a leer to spite him, a startling mixed message; friendly on one side, or at least attempting to be, viciously disfigured on the other. 

For a long time mirrors were hard on him. He’d broken every mirror in the first safe house Hannibal brought them to, working his way from room to room in a methodical opiate daze, but when he reflected upon it later he could say to what extent he’d been driven to do so by his own bandaged face; Dolarhyde was deep under his skin at the time, and his ghost was still with Will now, though he’s managed to leave the mirrors alone as they moved from from hotel to hotel, finally coming to rest in the current beach house. 

Will believed, perhaps, that their more permanent lodging was in some way a concession to Will, or rather an acknowledgment of how frayed around the edges Will had become, how desperately in need of stability he was. 

It had happened fast, that little beach house. The paperwork was finalized before the ring of bruises around Hannibal’s neck finished fading. 

He flexed his hands, feeling the phantom ache in them as he remembered how it had felt to nearly squeeze every last drop of life out of Hannibal. 

Will didn’t know if he’s any better now than he had been when he snapped that night, if the new house or Hannibal’s increased careful caution with him made any difference. He thought that maybe he was both better and worse off now than he’d been when he tried to kill Hannibal, and that troubled him. 

For a while, he’d half expected to wake with hands around his own neck, though he knew perfectly well that wasn’t Hannibal’s aesthetic. If retribution came it would be more elaborate than that - better planned out, more artistic - but months had passed and that hammer had yet to fall. 

That troubled Will, too. It might mean that Hannibal’s apology really was sincere, and if that forgiveness was real and really did come with no strings attached, then that meant that he owed Hannibal something. 

The debt was like a monkey on his back, resting heavy between his shoulders as he made his way from the docks and up the path to meet Hannibal for their lunch date. 

  
  


The breeze off the ocean kept the open air cafe cool. Hannibal was already seated at their regular table, just under the edge of the awning. 

Will went to him, sliding in across from him at the table, and Hannibal reached out and brushed his fingers briefly against the edge of Will’s hand. 

Unable to articulate, even inside the bone arena of his own skull, what that carefully thought out casual touch made him feel, Will turned his head away, looking for the waitress. 

Will speech was mangled along with his face, but he’s learning to speak around the scars. It was not the first time the waitress served their table, and Will was able to order for himself without having to repeat anything, nor did she look to Hannibal for clarification. 

She stared at Will’s scar as he spoke, and Will saw her mapping at the path of the crooked red blaze that ran down from his cheekbone to the base of his jaw, the puckered fish hook-shaped scar yanking his upper lip upward, but the amount of pity in her eyes was not toxic. 

When she’d moved out of earshot of their table, Will said softly, “She’s getting used to looking at me. It’s an acquired taste, isn’t it?”

Hannibal looked up at him, long and hard, and his regard felt to Will as though there was a spider inside his skull, crawling through the dark corridors and peering into hidden corners. It was odd, he supposed, how that sensation had become as familiar and welcomed as the pull of the scar left behind when Hannibal gutted him. 

These days more than ever, the feeling of eyes watching Will was like the touch of grubby fingers attempting to pry him open, but it was good to be seen by Hannibal. 

“I’m not troubled by my own tastes,” he told Will. “Or by looking at you.”

“Sometimes I look at myself,” Will said, gesturing at his own face, “at all of this, and I think that it’s only fair - that at the end of the day it only reflects what’s inside of me.” 

There were people at the tables near them, and so Will did not say all that he might have wanted to say, how the scar reminded him always of all the things inside himself that were cold and vicious and made sharp to cut, the aspects of himself that were still so often unspeakably ugly to Will’s own inner-eye, the shadows that Hannibal drew out into the light - groomed, nurtured, fed. 

Cherished, even.

“You wouldn’t feel that way about it,” Hannibal said, “if it you were seeing anyone but yourself. Disfigurement is no more a punishment for sin than beauty is reflexive of virtue.” 

Seized by a type of embarrassment that Will would only much later identify as bashfulness, Will dropped his gaze. 

When he looked up again, Hannibal was watching him, a patient and pleased smile on his face, warmly tolerant, and Will felt that warmth flood through himself. 

Feeling as shy as he had been when he first suggested the idea, back when they were still trying to piece themselves back together after the cliff fall, Will said, “We could do something, when we get back home.”

He watched Hannibal weighing that. They haven’t been intimate since that last time, months ago, when Will strangled him until his heart stopped. Will knew that Hannibal was considering the possibility that something like that might happen again, but it was not fear that caused him to pause, but rather speculation. 

An astonishing thing, to have someone who knew fully what he was capable of, and to still be wanted. 

Hannibal hooded his eyes and said in a low and sultry voice, “What would you like to do, Will?” and paying no mind to the tug of his scarred face, Will grinned. 


	2. Chapter 2

The good feeling had begun to fade by the time the waitress brought their meals, and at first Will didn’t understand consciously what was dragging him down. He felt exposed - ugly and vulnerable in that ugliness.

“Feels like there’s ants under my skin,” he muttered to Hannibal, lifting a hand to rub at the back of his neck. 

Hannibal did not answer, but he cut his eyes to the side, with a barely discernible motion indicating something to Will’s right. 

Will’s heart rate kicked up, but he didn’t look in that direction right away. Instead, he finished his drink, and with the empty glass as a pretext he glanced around the cafe, as though looking for their waitress.

When his eyes met those of the tourist at the table to their right, Will’s attempt to remain inconspicuous fell away. He had been staring at the two of them, that tourist, and Will met that stare, unblinking in the wake of the waves of hatred that came at him from the man’s eyes. 

Will saw himself and Hannibal the way that the stranger saw them, the layers of disgust, and he felt his own upper lip begin to curl in an exaggerated mimicry of one of Hannibal’s subtle snarls. 

Hannibal’s hand brushed his wrist. He murmured something to Will, his voice low and intimate, an innocuous comment on the menu, and Will looked back to meet his eyes and understood at once the reason why Hannibal was being so careful to avoid responding to the way the stranger was looking at the two of them; he did not wish to be noticed noticing the tourist. 

There was an avid spark in Hannibal’s eyes, and as Will looked back at him, he knew that his own face was visible to the stranger in profile, the knife-slice scar gleaming pinkly under the bright noon sun. 

Will leaned in to grasp Hannibal’s wrist gently with one hand, slipping his other hand into Hannibal’s, and smiling softly with the right side of his face when Hannibal’s fingers closed around it.

He could feel the scar where Matthew Brown had attempted to open Hannibal’s radial artery. The scars on the undersides of Hannibal’s forearms hadn’t tanned the way the rest him has. The scar tissue was pale and very soft, and Will traced the length of it with the side of his thumb, thinking. 

He was no longer showing off to get under the tourist’s skin, though Will hadn’t forgotten that he was there. Will imagined then, not knowing how badly it would all go, that very soon he would be thinking of little else beside the stranger. 

Sitting at the cafe table, Will was almost certain that he knew what sort of sounds the stranger would make when Will cut him. He felt sick in his heart with self-loathing and disgust at that idea and the appeal it held for him, even has his heart beat fast with an eagerness to find out if he was right. 

The harm Matthew’s knife did was more than cosmetic. There’s nerve damage in Hannibal’s left hand, and sometimes it trembled on its own accord, especially when Hannibal was worn out from a heavy piece of work, but both his hands were still preternaturally strong. 

At the moment, those hands were being gentle with Will, just as Will was being gentle with Hannibal, but they haven’t always been, and there was no guarantee that they would always remain so, but when they left the cafe Will’s fingers nonetheless were laced around Hannibal’s. 

  
  


They went home - to the home that they had, against all odds, made together - and together they laid their plans. They discussed, at length, how to go about it, and even if Will needed to drink his way through the conversation he was a wholly involved part of it. 

“It’s apt to be a long night,” Hannibal told Will. “We ought to take a nap.”

Will accepted the wisdom of that, but sleep was impossible, and after a while he slipped from the bed and padded silently back to the kitchen, knowing as he did so that Hannibal was probably only pretending to be asleep for Will’s own sake. 

When he lifted the fish from the bottom shelf of the fridge, Will felt the scar in his belly pull again, and that reminded him of the feel of the scars that he’d caused to be made on Hannibal’s body, the softness of those scars under his thumb. An uneasy sense of bafflement struck him, a sort of mystified wonder at the irresolvable tangled of needs - both his own and Hannibal’s - that brought them to this point and that hold them here, together, despite everything. 

Tonight, Will’s decided, he will claim the kitchen for himself, and put together with the sea bass a meal that is straightforward and simple, and once they have finished eating - once it is late enough and he’s had a chance to drink enough to stomach the night’s work without losing his nerve or his dinner - they will, the two of them together, pay the tourist a visit. 


End file.
